When twelve-year-old Moses Cotton returns home one fall evening to discover the gate to his family's farm uncharacteristically closed and the shape of a cross cut from high above the barn door, he suspects something dangerous is afoot. As if the town's recent plague of field-mowing mole crickets isn't enough of a mystery, Moses is drawn to investigate the connection between a series of bizarre occurrences and a long-dead fanatical evangelist. As orders begin to pour in from deep within the woods of the back pasture, young Moses employs his seemingly disregarded status as a means to expose a plot that could destroy not only his family, but an entire town as well.